


All of My Walls

by tollofthebells



Series: Aurelia Hawke [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Minor Character Death, Post-A Bitter Pill, Rivalmance, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-07-08 14:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15932348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tollofthebells/pseuds/tollofthebells
Summary: "Here, in her own bed, pinned between silken sheets and the tanned, nimble body of a certain elf, with absolutely nothing under her control and absolutely all of her heart in the open for the taking, Hawke finds herself a stranger."A closer look at what transpires between Hawke and Fenris after A Bitter Pill and through Act III.





	1. Thief

This is not Hawke as she knows herself. It’s not the Hawke who’d hardly batted an eye at getting her hands dirty from day one in Kirkwall, making reparations for family mistakes made long before she’d arrived, nor the Hawke who wouldn’t think twice about slaying anyone who dared double-cross her, nor the Hawke who had templars trembling in her wake for fear of retaliation if she ever caught word of anyone treating her sister unfairly in the Gallows. It certainly wasn’t the Hawke who maintained the constant appearance of having things under her control, even when she knew deep down that every choice she made was a gamble.

No. Here, in her own bed, pinned between silken sheets and the tanned, nimble body of a certain elf, with absolutely nothing under her control and absolutely all of her heart in the open for the taking, Hawke finds herself a stranger.

It’s his last kiss that really does her in. It sears at her lips, it pushes hot and wet against her mouth, it stifles the cry of his name from her throat, and he holds it. Long, deep. Until the very taste of him is embedded upon her tongue and engrained in her mind, until she’s absolutely dizzy from the comedown, until at last he can’t hold it any longer and he breaks it off, gasping for air, nearly shaking from the fervency and the sheer _hunger_ of being with her, and collapsing onto the maroon sheets beside her. She’s almost glad when he doesn’t speak. She’s somehow lost the ability to string together real thoughts toward him, much less words. After all, every conversation, every confrontation, every encounter between the two of them always ended in argument, in bitter exchanges and biting remarks.

But not this. No. Hawke could never recall feeling at once so vulnerable and so at peace.

They lie like this, together, silent but for the gentle autumn winds coming in through her half-open window and the distant echoes of passerby strolling far below them on the late-evening sidewalks of Hightown. She’s unsure of how long. It could be moments, it could be hours. He says nothing when she takes his hand in hers, and still nothing when she rubs her thumb over the crimson bit of linen encircling his wrist. He’d ripped it from her braid before, carelessly, passionately, anything to let him rake his fingers through her long black hair as he’d pushed her hard against the wall before him. She smiles at it now, still in place where she’d knotted it hastily around him for safekeeping.

His silence persists even when she draws his fingers to her lips and kisses them one by one, softly, slowly, working her way from his little finger across to his thumb. It comes as a surprise when she means to let go that his thumb lingers at her mouth, and for a moment, her breath catches in her throat. His does, too.

They are unaccustomed to softness.

Ever slowly and with a gentleness she’d never known he’d held within him, he drags his thumb over her bottom lip, the calloused skin of his finger slow and methodical. He repeats the motion with her top lip, and then the bottom again, as though to memorize the feeling of them on some part of him. It’s not until he takes his hand away that she realizes she’s been holding her breath all along, and she lets it out all at once, her pale cheeks flushing with the absence of him.

 _What a fool you’ve become, Aurelia Hawke_ , she scolds herself silently. Years of heated bickering, a companionship of convenience at best, and suddenly she finds herself mourning the loss of his thumb upon her lip. Truth be told, she’s wanted this longer than she’d be willing to admit to anyone, least of all him. They’re more rivals than friends, yet she’d be lying if she said wasn’t grateful they’d finally had enough of ignoring the obvious attraction between them.

When her breathing has finally evened out, she turns to him, slowly, silently. “Timid” is hardly a word in her vocabulary and yet the kiss she presses to his shoulder is far from bold. It’s chaste. Tender. Testing the waters, testing him. Testing herself. And still, he says nothing. So she lingers, nose against the pale lyrium tattoo that stands as a stark contrast to his copper skin, and takes in the scent of him. He smells of sweat, of worn leather, of bitter metal, and of the dust that haunts the halls of Danarius’ estate. She’s long wondered why, after all this time, he still stays there. He isn’t like her or Varric, with unfinished family business tying them down to the city, nor Isabela, shipwrecked and unable to leave without her lost relic. Anders has a sense of duty, a _purpose_ in staying in Kirkwall. Even Merrill’s chosen the city as her home. But Fenris could go anywhere. He’d be _safer_ anywhere else. And yet he stays, and for the first time, Hawke allows herself to wonder if he has more reason to stay than revenge.

She’s torn cruelly from her thoughts when he sits up abruptly next to her. Her heart jumps, apprehensive, but she doesn’t speak. She only watches as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, hunched over, exhausted, and hides his face in his hands. She has no answer to the long sigh he gives, nor the shaky intake of breath that follows it. It’s not until he stands and crosses the room and reaches for the leggings he’d thrown so carelessly to the floor just earlier that night that she finally finds her words.

“You don’t have to go, Fenris,” she rushes, the tremor in her voice betraying her usual stoicism. She knows she sounds desperate. Any other time, she would stop herself right there. And yet the words tumble from her lips of their own accord, uncontrolled, unchecked. “I mean, you can stay. Please. I—”

“Hawke,” he croaks, defeated and with a hopelessness she doesn’t recognize in him. “I’m not staying.”

She stares. Her heart pounds. “What?”

He pauses for what seems like hours. With every second he doesn't speak, she feels regret. _Shame_. “I can’t be here,” he says. “This...should never have happened.”

Her blood turns cold in her veins.

“Was it not...was I—”

“It’s not that at all,” he mutters.

Now she really feels the fool. Had he not felt as she had? Had he not wanted her like she’d wanted him? She has nothing to compare it to. They’re two of the same souls, burying their feelings, ignoring them until at last something breaks within them. Had she really mistaken his physical desire for her as something more?

“Then what is it?” she presses. She knows she’s babbling, and yet any semblance of authority she’s once had over her words is gone. “I don’t understand why—”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“But—”

“There are things,” he begins slowly, his words shakier than usual, but their purpose still strong, “that I have spent years trying to forget. But being with you tonight has brought them back.” He’s fastened his last bracer now, and he stands before her, looking at her, almost apologetically. As if he hasn’t just taken her soul at its most vulnerable and crushed it beneath his palm. “It would be wrong of me to stay.”

She stares at him, incredulous. She knows his past. But she knows herself, too. Or she once did.

“It wouldn’t be fair to you,” he adds quietly, and she tries, selfishly, to believe his agony could not possibly be worse than hers. She knows she’s wrong.

“ _This_ isn’t fair to me!” she says hotly, trying in vain to blink back the tears threatening along her lashes. “This—you can’t just—”

“Aurelia,” he says, somehow both gravely and reverently, and she’s silent. He’s never once in the four years they’ve known each other call her by her first name, and now, understanding his tone, she nearly wishes he hadn’t. Nearly.

And suddenly, the conversation is over. There is no argument left to be had. _So this is the nature of our relationship_ , she realizes darkly, and in the moment, her shame overpowers her heartbreak. So many times, she’d fought alongside him and won. But now, she’s fought _with_ him. And she has lost. She turns from him, clenching her jaw, anything to keep herself from crying in front of him.  _Just go_ , she thinks, but she can hear him still standing there, fumbling with the fabric along his wrist. Humiliating her further.

“This is yours,” he mumbles, stupidly.

She doesn’t even look up. “I don’t want it back,” she says, hollow. She’d sooner see him hurl the red fabric into the fireplace across from them than risk brushing her fingers against his taking it back. Minutes ago she’d long for the feeling of his skin against hers; now, the thought makes her stomach turn. She feels crushed. She feels _sick_. And yet, when he at last opens her bedroom door, his back to her, she speaks once more.

“Why did you do it?” she asks, countless questions all in one. One he doesn’t need her to clarify. _Why did you kiss me? Why did you come here tonight? Why did you give me something just to take it away?_

_What have you done to me?_

He lingers in the doorway, and her foolish heart dares to hope that he might change his mind.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, his only response, and he’s gone.

She stares at the closed door, waiting, watching, until her eyes sting, whether from the intensity of her gaze and the furrow of her brow or from tears, she doesn’t know. She waits until the last of her candles dwindles into a weakly flickering glow, until the flame finally goes out in a wisp of silver smoke, and she knows she waits in vain, because she _knows_ Fenris, and she knows he has never once regretted a single action done of his free will.

He has taken her from herself without even extending her the courtesy of regret.


	2. Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uGH.

She doesn’t leave the Hawke estate for days. Instead, she makes Bodahn promise her he won’t let anyone in. She lets her mail pile on her desk, unopened. She hardly touches her food. She speaks to no one, except Leandra, once, when she stops by her bedroom before leaving for the market and tells her her hair could use a wash. Knocks on the front door here and there serve as her only reminder of the world outside, a world she _belongs_ in. A world she didn’t quite have the heart to return to yet.

On the fourth day, the knocking becomes a steady pounding of fists, and Bodahn breaks his promise. The great heavy doors creak he opens them, and her stomach twists.

“You up there, Hawke?” calls Varric.

 _Oh, Maker_ , she thinks, breathing a sigh of relief.

He knows she’s there. She knows that he knows. So she doesn’t answer. In seconds she hears not one, but two sets of footsteps begin up the stairs, and not seconds after that, the door to her room opens.

“What in Andraste’s name has been keeping you—oh.” She’s never known Varric, of anyone, to be at a loss for words, but then again, she’s never found herself in such a state before. He’s hardly through the threshold when Isabela pushes past him; like Varric, her smile disappears instantly at the sight of her.

“Oh _Hawke_!” she says, and if Hawke’s utterly aching heart and swollen red eyes hasn’t been shame enough, surely Isabela’s pity is. “Look at you!”

 _I’d rather not_. She knows she’s a mess, curled hopelessly into her unkempt sheets—sheets that still smelled like _him_ —dejected, exhausted, surrounded by cups of room-temperature untouched tea and dishes of dried fruit and nuts. She’d been perfectly happy to wallow in her own pity—not theirs. But she’s grateful, truly, that it’s Varric and Isabela who’ve come, because they know her, nearly as well as she knows herself, and they won’t pry.

They don’t even ask what happened to her, or more accurately, _who_ happened to her. Hawke would bet her lifetime wicked grace winnings that they already know. Instead, they get to work. Isabela calls to Bodahn to draw a bath, and despite Hawke’s objections, Varric disappears to the first floor with an armful of her still-full dishes muttering something about “proper food.”

The bathwater doesn’t take long—she suspects Sandal had a few flame runes lying around—and Isabela drags her out of bed and helps her out of her pajamas and into the tub, pouring in a stream of Antivan bath oils she’d gifted to her last Satinalia and humming an old Rivaini shanty while she works. She closes her eyes, letting her hair soak in the hot water, willing it to wash away her feelings, her frustration and humiliation. It doesn’t. But at least she’ll be cleaner for it, at the end.

She’s still in the bath by the time Varric returns, and although she can’t see him from behind the screen Isabela has set up beside the bath, she can smell the hot food he’d brought upstairs with him.

“Dinner for when you’re done,” he calls from behind the screen. “I’m going to snoop through your mail now.”

“You don’t have—”

“ _Someone_ has to read them,” he interrupts. “And you don’t really seem to be in the mood.” She sighs but doesn’t answer. An unspoken _all right, fine_. “Ah, don’t worry, Hawke,” he adds in the teasing voice he only uses to cheer her up. “I’ll leave all your love letters unopened.”

She freezes, and for a moment, there’s no noise except for the steady _drip_ of water from the ends of her hair back into the tub.

“Ah, fuck,” Varric mutters on the other side.

“ _Varric!_ ” Isabela hisses, but before Hawke can subject herself to her pity yet again, she hoists herself out of the bath, throwing a towel around her shoulders.

“Read whatever you like,” she says, stone-faced, swallowing the pain back. Just as she had when Carver died. When Bethany was taken. Just as always.

“Hawke—” Isabela attempts, but she waves her off, drying the water from her hair and pulling a tunic and pants on.

“All right, let’s see here,” says Varric when she emerges from behind the screen. It’s as though he hasn’t missed a beat, his voice instantly returning to his usual cheer, but the concerned glance he and Isabela share for a fraction of a second before he turns to her mail doesn’t escape Hawke. “One from the viscount—might be worth keeping. One from the Knight-Captain looking for help—garbage.” Hawke takes a bite of bread from the plate Varric has brought up. It’s flavorless, bland. She doesn’t care.

“One from your Uncle,” Varric mutters, sorting the envelope immediately into the garbage pile. He sighed deeply, dropping the remainder of the letters before him. “Look, Hawke, I just...are you okay? Are you gonna be okay?”

She swallows the bread, dry and itchy against her throat, and feels a few stray crumbs fall to the carpet. “I’m fine,” she lies, steeled and simple as ever. “It was nothing. A foolish mishap, it caught me off guard for a moment, but...nothing more.”

Varric purses his lips. Isabela doesn’t even look up from the floor.

“It won’t happen again,” Hawke affirms.

“You don’t have to promise us anything,” Isabela says in a gentle tone she brings out so rarely.

 _I know_ , thinks Hawke. _But I have to promise myself_.

* * *

When Hawke arrives at Fenris’s mansion a day later, Aveline and Anders in tow, it’s as though nothing at all had transpired between them.

“We’re going to the Wounded Coast,” she announces the moment he opens the door, and he raises a single bleary hand against the midmorning Hightown sun to look at her.

He’s hardly in the right state to go _anywhere_ , but _Maker_ , he couldn’t bear to disappoint her more than he already has, so he nods and ushers them inside.

“Maker’s breath,” mutters Aveline when he’s gone to change into his armor. When she thinks he’s out of earshot. “It smells like a vineyard in here.”

“We should have brought Varric instead,” huffs the mage.

Hawke, whether out of annoyance or in his defense—although he strongly doubts it’s the latter—ignores both of them. “Ready?” she asks when he returns back downstairs. She isn’t speaking to him, really, more _at_ him, but he nods regardless, and Aveline and Anders are quick to hurry back out the door once more.

“Hawke,” he starts when she turns to follow suit. She whips around at him, close, fists clenched, whatever poise she’d held before suddenly abandoned and _Maker_ , he never knew blue eyes could hold so much fire. Whatever he’d wanted to say—not that he really had a plan to begin with—is long forgotten now.

“ _What?_ ” she seethes. It’s hardly the first time he’s been caught in the line of her burning glare. But it’s the first time he knows, wholly and undoubtedly, that he deserves it.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wants to tell her. But he already has. _I’m a fool_. But she knows this herself. _I wanted to stay._ But she wouldn’t believe him. “Nothing,” he says quietly. He’ll settle for nothing.

Her eyes bore into him just a moment longer, and like that, the moment has passed, and she’s turned to the door once more, her loose braid long and swinging around behind her.

 _Aurelia_ , he should have said, and he curses under his breath as they make their way outside city limits. _Aurelia_. Because the only time he has ever had the pleasure of letting her name grace his lips, it was as a farewell.

* * *

Ever true to herself, Hawke’s silence speaks volumes. She doesn’t invite him out again. He gets the message. Loud and clear. In response, he begins to invite himself, hanging around Hightown until he sees her head out for a job, taking tips when Aveline—who pities him, truth be told—lets it slip where they’re headed. He even goes as far as to ask Varric for help; he’s rewarded promptly with a _not from me, elf_ —he should have known, he’s her closest friend. And yet for all time times he tags along, silent but for his sword’s work, she never turns him away. Not once.

And when word spreads of her mother’s disappearance, he’s there in Lowtown with her, following her, following a trail he knows from the beginning could not possibly end well. He’s there when they crawl beneath the city into Darktown, he’s there when she’s swarmed by undead and demons alike, and he’s there at her side when she slaughters Quentin for what he’s done to Leandra, to Alessa, to Ninette. When she collapses to the ground, surrounded by pieces of the damned, by horrific fragments of Quentin’s victims, he is there.

“Anders,” she begs, and it’s gut-wrenching to hear her pleas, her, _Hawke_ , someone who has never once granted herself the humility to beg for _anything_. “Please, Anders, you have to save her.”

“I can’t, Hawke,” is all the mage can manage, and for once, Fenris agrees with him. There’s nothing that can be done.

“Please,” she whispers, again and again. “Please.”

And from the ruin, somehow, Leandra beckons to her. “Aurelia,” she whispers, and it’s weak, it’s fleeting, just barely grasping to the threads of life.

“Mother?”

 _It’s intriguing_ , Fenris thinks, _how one can despise another until it’s the end_. Too much left unsaid, too much left unappreciated, too little time to make amends.

“Mother,” Hawke repeats, holding her feeble body in her arms. “I can help you, Anders can help—”

“No,” she says, firm as she can. “Aurelia, you have to let me be free. Please. I’ll see your brother again,” she whispers, a smile tugging in vain at the weak muscles around her mouth. “And your father.”

“Mother,” Hawke chokes, and Leandra makes a last effort to reach out and stroke her hair, her skeletal fingers grasping fraily for the soft black strands.

“But you’ll be all alone.”

“No,” Hawke says, adamant as ever, even with her tears falling freely now. Fenris’s heart wrenches.

When Leandra’s fingers fall limp from Hawke’s hair, he knows she’s gone.

* * *

In spite of his own hesitance, he finds himself at the Hawke estate once more. He has nothing to offer but what he’s already taken from her once, but he goes, wordless as Bodahn permits his entry with a wary eye, silent as he climbs the stairs like so many times before in what feels like another world, another time. She’s startled when he enters her room, red-eyed, broken. He doesn’t stop at the doorway like he knows he should; he keeps going, long paces, deliberate, until he’s at her side, sitting on the edge of her bed once more.

“Aurelia,” he murmurs, and she pales.

“You’re here,” she breathes.

“I’m here,” he replies.

Her breathing is ragged from crying, weak from their proximity. “Why?”

He can only shake his head, shrug, powerless under her blue eyes, her eyes that demand answers when he has none.

And then her mouth is on his, hot, needy, searching for a forgiveness he can’t offer, begging for a release he can’t give. But he doesn’t stop her. He returns her kiss, returns her hunger two-fold, and let’s his hands tangle in her long black hair, long since undone from its braid. He kisses her until he can’t feel his lips, until she pushes him away from her, confused, hurt, still needing, still wanting.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wants to say, but how many times can he give her an empty apology?

“Go,” she spits, and without hesitation, he obeys.

 _I’m sorry, Aurelia_ , he thinks. Another mistake. Another night taking and taking what isn’t his. Hawke has had everything taken from her, he knows, _everything_ , and they only keep coming, pillagers and looters alike in the aftermath of one another. It haunts him to know he can count himself among them.


	3. Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not sure this is the side you want to be standing on, Fenris,” she says softly when he’s reached the top of the stairs. She doesn’t look at him, only looks away, out to the courtyard, to the fallen mages and templars who wouldn’t make it to the next wave of fighting. He takes a deep breath.
> 
> “It’s the side you’re on, isn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, poetic license was taken with alone and the last straw.

After her mother dies, Hawke asks Isabela to cut her hair. Her long black locks are lying in a pile on the floor of the Hanged Man before Varric has a chance to stop them, and she doesn’t regret it, she regrets _nothing—_ after all, she’s learned from the best. The morning after that is the last time she sees Fenris. They don’t speak, it’s merely a passing meeting, blue eyes on green as he’s left his estate and she’s approaching her own. He walks by her wordlessly, and _still_ he wears the red cloth on his arm, the one he’d taken so many years ago. It’s faded now, darker only in the creases where he’s knotted it tightly around wrist. It’s a constant reminder of that night, a mere physical symbol of everything else he’s taken from her. It’s cruel. And like that, he’s gone. She doesn’t blame him,  _go_ , she’d told him.  _Go_. Her last word. 

* * *

 In spite of everything, her life continues. The sun still rises each morning, Isabela and Varric awaiting her in Lowtown on her good days and at her doorstep knocking on her bad days. She does what she can for the First Enchanter, she does what she can for the Knight-Captain, but _Maker, something in this city is going to break_. She knows it. She can _feel_ it. Anders grows more distant, colder, Meredith and Orsino both pander more than ever before, it’s sickening, it’s _desperate_ , and she refuses to be a puppet to either _—_ she plays their games, but _Maker_ , she never shows her hand.

The months go by. The days grow shorter. She grows tired.

They’re on the verge of the break when autumn comes. She can tell. She hasn’t even seen Anders in weeks. By the close of Harvestmere, the First Enchanter requests her presence urgently in the Gallows.

She’s on her way out of Hightown when Aveline catches her, grabs her by the hand, breathless, _has she been running?_

“Hanged Man,” Aveline says, in the voice she only ever uses for work, for business, for _urgency_ . “Now. _Fenris_.”

Hawke doesn’t need to be told again. She’s gone. Her heart is _pounding_ . He’s disappeared for a year and she _runs_ , takes the steps down from Hightown two at a time, for _him_ , and when she enters the tavern, tables thrown backward, chair knocked aside, Fenris on the floor in a heap, the whole bloody scene unfolded before her, she knows. _Danarius_.

 _Fenris_ , she thinks, for once, for once, _why did you come back?_

* * *

“Hawke,” Fenris croaks, can barely speak for the blood on his tongue, the bust in his lip, but she’s here, _she’s here_ , standing before him fiercely, _protectively_ , as though she has any idea of what’s she’s walking into. _Turn around_ , he thinks, begs, _Aurelia, go back_.

“You let him go,” she growls at Danarius. Fenris knows her too well, she will not back down from this, and his heart aches for it. She is fearless, as always.

 _Please, turn back_.

Danarius only laughs at her, _how dare you_ , Fenris wants to say. “And who is this? Your new mistress? I suppose it’s no wonder you’ve been gone for so long.”

He snaps. _She_ snaps. “Fenris belongs to no one,” she snarls, standing over him, both blades drawn.

Danarius smiles. He _laughs_.

"Not even you?”

Her glare falters for a fraction of a second—Fenris might have missed it, had he blinked, but Danarius misses _nothing_. “Least of all me,” she says coldly, standing her ground, and slowly, hauntingly, Danarius _grins_. And again, he begins to laugh.

 _You’re wrong_ , Fenris wants to tell her. _I belong wholly and forever to you._ He wants to shout it at her. _I am yours_.

“I see,” the magister says, smile plastered wickedly upon his face, and it takes only a twist of his staff to set the room ablaze. It’s chaos. He’s thrown every demon he could conjure at Fenris, and now, on Hawke’s arrival, Danarius has only himself left in his arsenal, himself and his staff against her knives. And Fenris.

With Danarius distracted, with Hawke at his side, he reaches for his sword, forced from his hands earlier in the havoc. _I am yours_ , he thinks, swinging as she dodges Danarius’s spells, the flash of three blades moving in time to the flames and sparks from the mage. They fight as one unit, as they used to, her speed with his strength, _but oh, Danarius is relentless as ever._ They can’t fail, _I can’t fail her_ , but he grows tired against the magister’s spells, they both do, _how much does he have left?_

He swings, and turns, and steps, and swings.

She  _dances_.

And suddenly, without warning, the flames are gone, the spells vanquished. When she smoke clears up, it’s Hawke standing victorious, tired but unharmed, wary but unbeaten, one dagger plunged into the heart of the magister. _It’s over_.

She yanks her blade from his chest, wipes it on the thigh of her pants, sheathes it. “Fenris,” she whispers, out of breath. He stares at her. “It’s over.” She speaks softly, as she had years before, the one night they’d shared. “He can’t follow you anymore. You’re free.”

 _I was free the day I met you_.

She pulls a philter of something pink from her belt and tosses it to him; he starts to object but she raises a hand against him. “You need it more than I do,” she says, and as always, she’s right. He clears his throat.

“Hawke,” he says.

She flinches. His heart sinks.

 _Aurelia_.

He opens his mouth again, he knows his mistake, but any words he might offer are drowned out in a sickening thunder, a resounding roar of flames and crumbling buildings and carnage and ruin and the entire tavern quakes around them.

It feels like hours before the shaking stops, and dust begins to fill the Hanged man when at last the crashing comes to an end. “Aurelia _—_ ” he starts, but she holds a hand up, silences him.

“Anders,” she whispers, and she’s gone.

* * *

It’s a bloody mess when he gets to the Gallows. He tried to follow her, tried to stay close behind, but she’s too fast and he’s too hurt and it’s _too long_ before he’s able to cross the waters to Templar Hall, and by then it’s too late, there are too many fallen, everything is _burning_ , he barely recognizes his surroundings as the Gallows he’s visited time and time again. But she’s here, he can see her, ivory skin and red paint standing out in the smoke, and he runs, as well as his legs can carry him, to her.

“Hawke!” he calls to her. The courtyard is littered with the dead, with stone from fallen columns and broken wood from merchants’ crates that once lined the streets, but still, he fights through the flames and the debris to reach her. “Hawke!”

But she doesn’t hear him. Or she does, and doesn’t care. She’s tending to the wounded mages, he notices, and he searches fearfully for Bethany among the injured _—_ or worse, the dead. She’s not there, not that he can see, and he’s able to breathe a small sigh of relief. _But I have to get to her_.

“Aurelia!” he shouts at last, voice hoarse from repeated failed attempts, but he doesn’t fail now, _not this time_ , he thinks when her blue eyes finally find his amid the fire and rubble. _I came back for you._

“Fenris.” He can’t hear her say it, can barely hear himself thinking, but he sees his name on her lips and he feels like a man lost and suddenly found again.

“Aurelia,” he whispers again, not to her but to himself, and he at last begins the climb to the landing above.

Where she stands, above the courtyard, above the madness below them, it’s quiet, an eerie silence that hangs in the air like static before a tempest. “I’m not sure this is the side _you_ want to be standing on, Fenris,” she says softly when he’s reached the top of the stairs. She doesn’t look at him, only looks away, out to the courtyard, to the fallen mages and templars who wouldn’t make it to the next wave of fighting. He takes a deep breath.

“It’s the side you’re on, isn’t it?”

She turns, sharply, blue eyes cutting like ice into him, like she can hardly believe what he’s said, and _who can blame her?_ She shakes her head at him. “What are you doing here, Fenris?”

One question. How many more left unasked?

“I would never forgive myself if I didn’t come back.”

“Oh _don’t_ ,” she says, fiery with disbelief, her words drenched in a steel that could rival the armor clinging to her body. “You never regret anything.”

“You’re wrong,” he answers, shaking his head. “I have never regretting anything more than I regret leaving you that night.”

She stares at him, more than angry _—_ _hurt _—_ _ “You left _twice_ ,” she spits, as if he doesn’t already know, as if he doesn’t remind himself of the fact every single day, as if the thought doesn’t run through his entire being like a sword he’s brought upon his own being.

_I know._

“I was _terrified_ , but I wanted to be with you.”

_I know._

“I broke down all of my walls for you.”

_I know._

“You still left.”

He takes all of it, every word, he knows in his _bones_ that everything she’s said is true, and yet she’s not looking for an apology. She never has. “I wasn’t ready,” he whispers.

She turns her eyes downcast, running her blood-stained fingers through her black hair _—_ shorter now than before; he misses her old hair, but he lost the privilege of an opinion on the matter years ago.

“When my mother died, you left again.”

 _You turned me away,_ a lesser man could say, his former self _would_ say it _—_ it was the truth, after all; he hasn’t forgotten her rejection that night, the single word _go_ tearing into him like teeth into flesh.

“You weren’t ready.”

She says nothing for a long time, and he has nothing _left_ to say. But finally, she nods. Slowly, once, then again. “No,” she murmurs, “I wasn’t.”

“Hawke!” It’s Anders now, _the mage_ , climbing up to where they stand overlooking the courtyard. He nods curtly to Fenris in greeting, a nod he returns, for Hawke if nothing else. “They’re coming. It’s time.”

Her blue eyes find his once more, and he doesn’t give her the chance to ask if he’ll stay, _not this time_ , he thinks, _you won’t have to ask again_.

“I am yours.”

* * *

When it’s all said and done, when the First Enchanter is dust and bones and flesh in the courtyard of Templar Hall and the Knight-Commander entombed in the very poison she so willingly took, Hawke and Fenris are gone, far beyond city limits, far into the hills along the coast. They stand, side by side, looking back at the city that has taken and _taken_ greedily from her, taken her mother and her sister and her friends and her happiness, the same the city she has given everything to _—_ all of her time, all of her faith. In the end, Aurelia Hawke gave all of herself to the city of Kirkwall and in return it burns behind her, gone in a burst of flame and templars and mages and thanklessness. They watch for hours. They watch until the faint light of dawn rises on the other side of the hills, bathing the ghost of a stone city in a soft and undeservedly warm glow, and with a single outstretched hand, Fenris touches Hawke on the shoulder. Just once.

“Are you ready?” he asks her.

“I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part of this story (aurelia's haircut) has been expanded and can be found in this work's companion piecee [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332368/chapters/38209583).  
> well...that's it. my first story back since a longggggg hiatus of writing. comments appreciated, but many thanks to everyone who's read and enjoyed.


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